Meet Sprout — A gentle garden notebook

Lifestyle

Sprout

A gentle garden notebook.

Every feature, from the first launch.

No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.

What Sprout does

Sprout is the calm, on-device notebook for the houseplant keeper and the small-yard gardener. It is not a subscription. It is not a referral funnel. It is not a social network. It is a place to log what you have, remember when to water it, scan the nursery tag, and figure out what's wrong when the leaves start to do something strange.

What ships in v1:

— Garden register: every plant gets a card — name, species (from a built-in library of ~80 common species), location (kitchen window, back yard, balcony), date acquired, light preference, watering rhythm, and a photo. — Nursery-tag scanner: snap the plastic tag that comes from the nursery. On-device Vision OCR pulls out the species, watering instructions, and light requirements so you don't have to type. — Care schedule: set a watering cadence per plant (every 3 days, weekly, biweekly). Sprout schedules local notifications so you actually remember the rosemary. — Photo growth log: drop one photo per week into a plant's timeline. Watch it grow back from a brush-trim. Watch when the spider mites took it. — Symptom diagnostic tree: yellowing leaves, brown spots, wilt, leggy growth, pest damage. Sprout walks you through ~30 likely causes (overwatering, underwatering, low light, root-bound, spider mites, fungus gnats, fertilizer burn, hard-water salts) and gives a calm fix for each — all from a bundled knowledge base, no AI black box. — Species library: a built-in reference for ~80 common houseplants and small-yard species. Origin, ideal light, watering frequency, toxicity to pets, fertilization rhythm, common problems. — Garden journal: free-form notes by date so you remember what you tried. — Privacy by default: no account, no analytics, no cloud, no third-party SDK. Plant photos, OCR text, notes — all stay on this device. — Completely free: no IAPs, no subscription, no "Pro," no unlock.

Sprout is for the person who keeps killing the basil and wants to figure out why, and for the person whose grandmother's ficus has survived three apartments and deserves a proper log.

A look inside

Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.

What's inside

Garden register — Per-plant cards with photo, species, location, light, watering.
Nursery tag scanner — On-device OCR to populate plant info.
Care schedule — Watering cadence with local notifications.
Symptom diagnostic — Walks through ~30 common houseplant problems.
Species library — Built-in reference for ~80 plants.
Photo growth log — Weekly photo timeline per plant.

Why we built it

Houseplant ownership in the US doubled during the 2020-2023 stretch. The mainstream plant apps (Planta $30/yr, PictureThis $30/yr, Greg, Blossom) are all subscriptions, all account-required, and all push toward upsells. None of them work fully offline. The actual problem the keeper has — what should I water, when, and…

What makes it different

Sprout is the only iOS app that combines (a) a per-plant care log with local watering notifications, (b) on-device OCR of nursery tags, (c) a bundled species library of ~80 common plants, AND (d) a deterministic symptom diagnostic tree — without an account, a subscription, or any cloud sync. Planta and PictureThis are…

Who it's for

Hobbyists who want a tool that respects their time, their gear, and their offline life.

In one line: A gentle garden notebook.

Try it

See the Sprout app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.

Use Sprout, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.